It was that cold November’s
evening that begun the trip of a lifetime as what would become the BBC’s
flagship show began airing to millions.
It was the first non-news related program to be airing since the
previous day when American President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated
in Dallas, Texas. It served to get the
public’s mind off the show even if the viewing figures were less than the
production team would have liked to see and it wouldn’t be until the second
serial, The Daleks, that Doctor Who
would cement itself with staying power by winning over the audiences. That doesn’t mean that the first serial, An Unearthly Child, is without merit, as
it has quite a few things that there are to admire about the story. It starts from the opening title sequence
which was done reflecting a light down a camera lens to produce a chilling
effect. It is enhanced by the plain
weird sounding theme music written originally by Ron Grainer, but truly brought
to the screen by Delia Derbyshire. After
the theme the first shot is a beautifully filmed tracking shot into the I.M.
Foreman junkyard where the camera stops on a perfectly ordinary police box
where we get the episode title.
The actual story
introduces the viewer to the principle characters of the show and the basic
concept of being lost in time and exploring different historical and scientific
topics which is all done in the first episode.
It pulls it off really well as we are introduced to Ian Chesterton and
Barbara Wright played by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill respectively, who
are two schoolteachers (Ian teaches science and Barbara teaches history). They are curious about one of their students,
Susan Foreman played by Carole Ann Ford who has been performing badly in
school. They are fed up with her not
knowing everything and decide the smart thing to do is follow her home to speak
with her grandfather and tell him to take an interest. They discover her home is a junkyard where
they find that Susan lives in a police box that is bigger on the inside and can
travel in space and time. She and her
grandfather, the Doctor played by William Hartnell are aliens and so they don’t
become the laughing stock or exhibits in a freak show the Doctor takes off with
the schoolteachers inside where they have to escape a tribe of cavemen for
three episodes. The first episode of the
story is really where it shines the brightest as it does a great job with the
atmosphere that something is about to happen which only makes it just as crazy
when the TARDIS is revealed.
Anthony Coburn’s script
makes the cavemen storyline suffer as it is just an hour and a half of politics
with characters who really aren’t that interesting. This part of the story is almost unbearable
to sit through as it continues at a really slow pace and a boring story that
needs a bit more action to make it better.
The regulars on the other hand are characterized brilliantly by Coburn
as we are introduced to the main players in this show. Ian and Barbara are introduced in a scene
that shows just how much chemistry they have as actors and characters. They feel very much like coworkers and both
have a reason to be fed up with their student.
This carries across the story with Ian being the skeptic while Barbara
is the optimist. Ian doesn’t want to
believe that a police box could possibly be a time machine. Barbara believes it just because of the
impossible things she had seen with something being bigger on the inside which
is of course impossible and while Barbara eventually goes into hysterics at one
point it makes sense as she would be terrified of going to a different time
without any sort of warning. Susan on
the other hand isn’t handled nearly as well as in the first episode she is just
as mysterious and is able to create the escape for the travelers in a great yet
morbid way, but in the middle of the story she has more hysteria than Barbara
even though she has already traveled in time before.
William Hartnell as the
Doctor in this story deserves a review of his own. He is not the Doctor that we all know and
love, but a young impulsive man who will do anything to protect his
granddaughter from harm even if it means hurting people. When he is introduced he tries his hardest to
get Ian and Barbara to leave him and Susan and when they break into his ship he
gives Ian an electric shock and proceeds to kidnap them all to protect his granddaughter. He even tries killing an injured caveman just
so they can try and get back to his ship.
He isn’t completely unlikable here however as there are moments where it
shows that he may be able to change. His
words about fear to Barbara are extremely comforting and you see the glimpse
that he might just change for the better.
To summarize, An Unearthly Child without its brilliant
first episode, could have killed the show immediately as the plot is extremely
slow and the cavemen politics really aren’t trying to comment on anything. The main characters however save this story
from this awful fate as they are done extremely well that paints a real picture
of where the show is going to go in the future and the eventual development
that is going to happen. This balances the
score of the episode out to the slightly above average 52/100.
Great review, Joe. Caveman politics indeed, it was very boring in Episode 2... Hey guess what? I started to review Doctor Who episodes today, and of course, this was my first review. Could you take a quick look(it's brief; that's how I'm gonna do it, just one paragraph) and tell me how to make it better? Thanks always ;)
ReplyDeleteWell my names not Joe...you may have me confused with someone else. I read your review of An Unearthly Child and for what it was it was okay. The gimmick of one paragraph may get a bit old if you wish to you know say more.
DeleteDamn it! Sorry for the mix-up. And thanks for your advice, I may get tired of the one-paragraph stuff...
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